It’s simple and unhurried, the tune I’ve heard him play on the couch, but never knew the words. The bar goes quiet, as all conversation stops. Leaving only Mike and the guitar and the lights reflecting the rings on his fingers.
And then he starts to sing.
He doesn’t talk much, but I hear him anyway.
I could find him in any crowd.
He doesn’t take his eyes off of me the entire time. He’s not scanning the room. He’s not performing for the crowd. He’s looking right at me, like no one else is here.
Prettiest frown I’ve ever seen.
Don’t get me started on that mouth.
He laughs on that line, a little puff of air into the microphone, and all I can do is match his smile.
The bar erupts, people cheering, shouting,they love him. And he takes it in with his head down, but when he looks back up, he finds me again.
I don’t even try to control my face this time. I’m staring at him like an idiot in love, and I know it.
“Who’s his roommate?” I hear a girl behind us say to her friend.
Beside me, Ryan turns to me with a look on his face that I don’t like. “What was that?” He asks, his voice gone cold.
“It was nothing,” I brush off, hoping my laugh doesn’t sound so forced. “He was messing around, you know how he is.”
“Nothing,” he repeats, and the way he says, I’m not sure he believes me. A little too controlled. But he turns back toward the stage and doesn’t say anything else.
Once Mike’s set is finished, I don’t hang around to see him. Ryan and I go back to the house, mostly because I don’t want Ryan to think too hard about what happened tonight. He’s happy now that we’re here and playing a game on the TV.
I expect Mike and his friends to be out most of the night, the way they always are after a show, so when the front door swings open, it startles the hell out of me.
They file in one by one, in the middle of a very loud conversation, the tattooed guitarist closing the door behind them.
The girl with the pink hair, Zara, I think Mike said, climbs over the couch, landing on the spot between Ryan and me with a crash. The drummer follows behind her, carrying a pack of beer and a pizza box that he sets down on the coffee table.
“You must be the roommate,” Zara says, looking up at me with sharp eyes and a smile that feels nothing but genuine. “The sexy anonymous one.”
“Alex,” I say, completely unprepared for this.
“I know.” She grins. “Mike talks about you.”
“I do not!” Mike shouts from the kitchen.
“Constantly,” she mouths, with a knowing look. I look at Ryan sitting behind Zara, where the frown from the bar is back on his face.
The drummer flips open the pizza box and grabs a slice. “You want some?” He offers, with his mouth full
“I’m good.”
“You sure? It’s really good.”
“Damon,” Zara says. “He said he’s good.”
“I’m just offering.”
“Let him breathe, geez.” That’s funny, coming from the girl who hasn’t stopped staring at me since they got here.
But even though it’s weird, and these people are a lot, the same way Mike is, I don’t feel the looming dread that I expected to feel with their attention on me.
